Mile High Music Festival is state’s largest
By Brian F. Johnson
www.milehighmusicfestival.com
Aug 14-15
The Fields at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park
Commerce City, Colo.
Positioned as Denver’s answer to festivals like Lollapalooza or Austin City Limits Festival, Mile High Music Festival has allowed promoter AEG Live to flex its muscles the last two years — and with the KBCO-friendly headliners Dave Matthews and Jack Johnson, for 2010 the festival will no doubt draw an even larger crowd this year.
Promoters have gotten the site dialed-in over the last two years, offering multiple misting stations and, of course, the large tent stages to help sheild the brutal mid-day sun at the treeless site. Battling that sun, though, is imperative if you want to have a decent view of the stage come nightfall. The fields are massive and provide an unobstructed view, but at the same time the vastness of those fields can soon put you far from the front row. So the name of the game at Mile High is to get there early, stake your claim with chairs or a blanket for the appropriate headline stage, and then float around to the other stages throughout the day, all the while crossing your fingers that your territory doesn’t get taken over by latecomers.
Travel time:
(As calculated by maps.google.com from
Denver, Colo. to Commerce City, Colo.)
Total Est. Time: 17 minutes
Total Est. Distance: 9.8 miles
You NEED TO KNOW: Allow me to impart some wisdom from a lesson learned: If you think you’re smart and can beat the traffic by going counterclockwise around the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, you’ve got another thing coming. A buddy and I tried this and 40 minutes later realized that if we had just stayed in the lane of traffic we were in, we would have had beer in our hands 35 minutes sooner.
Price: $$$
Camping: No Camping
